


Nowhere Man

by LaCidiana



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Dark, Drama, F/M, Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaCidiana/pseuds/LaCidiana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A happy ending depends on where you stop your story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere Man

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate events following Life on Mars ending; disregards all Ashes to Ashes canon. "Nowhere Man" by The Beatles.
> 
> Very first LoM writing I ever did, though I eventually cannibalized most of this fic's concepts for my post-apoca. Here is what remains! Beta'd by Court (♥!), and apologies for any amateur character missteps and/or unintentional Americanism.

_he's a real nowhere man  
sitting in his nowhere land  
making all his nowhere plans  
for nobody_

\---

Sam's never fancied himself a brave man, not really. An honest one, perhaps, and one who recites police academy ethics like a litany, but he's not Bruce Willis, or Stallone, or any other American action hero who rushes into battle with catchphrase courage, and guns, and more than his fair share of charisma.

It isn't real bravery anyway, the Hollywood kind. And so he's waved it off, filed it away, ended the comparison there. He'll let the Guv be the one to model himself on Eastwood and he doesn't give it more thought than that.

It's because of this that Sam doesn't realize that where there are heroes, there are cowards. Men who hide when life becomes difficult, when trials seem painful, when running is the easy thing to do. Like Tuco, who Eastwood puts in the noose, who thinks he's the hero, and he isn't, but he is.

Sam doesn't realize that running can be the same as jumping.

\---

He can't remember the last time he was this happy. He realizes this as he chews on bits of sausage and eggs; they should be salty, chewy, homely, straight off an old counter in an old kitchen, but it's like nostalgia on a fork. It's gourmet. It's fantastic.

"Enjoying that, are you?"

He let Annie make breakfast today. He smiles at her.

"Yeah." It feels nice to be relaxed, to be comfortable. Things aren't perfect, but they're near enough, and anyway, he's learned that "perfect" isn't what he wanted in the first place.

"I'm glad," she says. She puts her hand over his. Her fingers are tender, warm. Sun filters through windows fogged with grime to set a soft halo across her fluffed-up hair. It's beautiful, this.

And it's been so sunny lately.

\---

The sun, Ray grumbles, is why crime is up.

"Blokes and birds hot in the knickers." He chews on his gum. "Right recipe for trouble."

Sam flips through papers. "Right recipe for working nights, you mean."

Ray glares. He carefully enunciates his words, or at least as carefully as a man like Ray can.

"Some of us _like_ to sleep, _Boss_."

"Come on, Ray," Chris pipes up from his desk, raising his tired head from behind a wall of paper. "Weren't his fault city's gone loony."

" _I'll_ be loony from hearing coppers whinge about taking scum off the street!"

Gene slams his hands down on a desk. Ray startles. Chris slouches.

"Sorry, Guv."

But Gene's not looking at them. His eyes are on Sam, dark and appraising, and Sam tries to think why that might be. Sam hasn't been any more difficult than usual, not in weeks. He hasn't needed to be.

Sam offers a sheet of paper to him, calmly, like an olive branch. "Might have a lead on this one, Guv. Witness says--"

"I could give a prozzie's tart arse what he said." Gene smacks Sam's hand away and strides to the door. He yanks his tie back and forth to loosen it. "Long as it's a reason out of this bleeding oven."

Sam frowns.

He looks around the room. Ray tugs his collar from his shiny neck. Chris rubs away the hair plastered to his forehead. Annie stands near the cabinet, flushed, fanning herself with a file.

Sam looks down at himself. He's wearing his jacket.

He's been wearing his jacket all day.

\---

The witness turns out to be the culprit. He flees out the window and through the alley.

Sam's boots clip the cobblestone as he chases, air in his chest, wind in his hair. He missed this from the bleak, grey future that was his past. He revels in it: the excitement, the danger, the _freedom_. He can choose his own path. He has room to shape his life in a world not yet bound to rows and numbers.

The suspect stumbles. Sam lunges, grabs him, slams him to the mossy brick wall.

He reads lines from a law not yet written, tightens the cuffs with care and conscience. He doesn't have to do either, and that's why he loves it. That's why it's _his_. He doesn't follow rules: he makes them.

He twists the man from the wall and turns to see Gene a few yards away, watching, hands in his pockets.

Sam smirks, heady.

"Some _help_ , Guv?"

Sam expects a blustery yell or a taunt -- anything other than the hard stare that his DCI continues to regard him with.

Sam's smirk fades. Gene turns away.

\---

"Fourth time this week. Done well, have you?"

It's the first thing Gene's said since they got back in the Cortina, after some plods picked up the runner. Sam frowns and turns to look at him.

"Fourth time for what?"

"Chasing." Gene veers left off a narrow corner, punctuates his words. "Having yourself a _grand_ time, I expect, playing a mad dog after a car." 

Sam's face twists with a kind of incredulous humor.

"What? Robbing your glory, Guv?"

Gene slams the heel of his hand to the wheel. "Don't start with me, Tyler. You know it's shit."

Christ, Gene's tetchy today. The crime rise must be threatening his manhood. Sam tries: "We've kept a good record, Guv, all things considered. Been solving most cases."

Gene looks briefly to Sam, then back to the road.

"The little man in the pit of me gut, he says that's the problem. He says something's rotten, stinking up in this heat."

Sam's eyes narrow. "So this little man says it's my fault, then? Sam Tyler's always to blame?"

"You're the git who thinks the sodding world's on his shoulders."

Sam grits his teeth.

"I thought we were _supposed_ to catch criminals with a certain amount of... efficiency."

"Oh, aye. And with a certain _efficiency_ , you have."

The bite in Gene's voice knocks Sam off-guard. He's come to know his DCI, know his moods and many shades of anger, but this one's different. Sam doesn't know how, but it _is_ , and now Sam's irritation fades, becomes something else. Something eerie.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

Gene grinds the car to a stop, pulls the brake. There's a tension in his shoulders as he opens the door.

"Call it a hunch."

\---

Annie's fan finishes blowing old dust from its blades by the time they lay down on her bed. She runs her fingers over Sam's bare chest, and though they're still tender, still warm, they aren't Sam's sole focus anymore. He stares at the wood-paneled ceiling, which he hasn't looked at -- really looked at -- in weeks. Hasn't considered the retro-novelty, the dark, ugly finish.

"What's wrong, Sam?"

Her voice breaks through his thoughts like a bell. He entwines his hand in hers.

"Nothing."

"You're a rubbish liar."

Sam's mouth twists. He bites his lip, tries to build solid words from his swirling mass of thoughts.

"You know the bloke we nicked today? Hartley?"

"The post robber? What about him?"

 _What about him?_ Sam's a detective, for God's sake. This shouldn't be hard for him to figure out.

"He was... an athlete, originally. Meter dashes, like."

"A sprinter?"

"Yeah," Sam says, and that's it. He was a sprinter. He was a bloody sprinter, and he'd run, and Sam had caught him, and it hadn't even been hard. Two blocks, it had taken. Two sodding blocks.

"And day before last," he continues like he's opened up a can of worms, seething through his fingers, "it was that Rickett boy; laid a booby trap across his door. Buckets of nails."

"Chris told me about that. Bad business."

"A _booby trap_ ," Sam echoes, eyes narrowed, mouth incredulous. "Who sets a _booby trap?_ Who knows to _look_ for one?"

"You do." Annie smiles, tentatively, setting her head against his shoulder.

 _That's right_ , Sam thinks, breathing deep, head swimming. _I do_.

"It's... all right, being brilliant," Annie says after a moment, pressing her hand to his cheek.

Sam doesn't answer. Annie's hand slides down. She sighs.

"S'been a long week, Sam. You're tired. Sleep."

Except Sam isn't tired, and he doesn't sleep. He lays awake through the night and listens to Annie's breathing. _She's happy_ , he decides; has been ever since he came back out of that tunnel. Things have gone well, and he shouldn't question it, shouldn't spoil it. He's a lucky man, that's all.

At one point, she stirs, frowns, pulls the covers back.

"Boiling," she mumbles, half-asleep.

Sam glances to the window, the dim city just visible through the curtain.

"It is," he murmurs. "Could do with some rain."

That morning, lightning cracks.

It starts to pour.

\---

Ray's a broken record. Now, the crime wave's because of blokes and birds being _wet_ in their knickers.

"Good day for a swim, innit, Boss?" Chris looks pleased with himself, hair still plastered to his forehead by the disparate weather.

"Thank you, Chris," Sam intones moodily. He glares at him and snatches the file being proffered, accidentally dripping some water from his cuff to the cover. Sam's soaked to the bone; his jacket hangs over the radiator courtesy of Annie's stubborn concern and his shirt clings to his shoulders like a washrag. He wonders if he's ruined his boots.

As Chris' smile falters, Annie walks by, gait dignified, focusing too hard on rearranging the papers in her arms.

"Don't mind him," she murmurs, loudly. "He _chose_ to walk here."

The station whistles and _oohs_ as Sam raises his eyes from the paper, but Annie's already halfway back to her desk.

She's right, of course. This morning, Sam shrugged her off, refused an umbrella, and trudged through puddles and rivers, flared pants slapping the backs of his calves with every step to the station. But Sam didn't explain why he wanted to enter the front doors dripping, sniffling, shuddering from cold. Why each laugh from a co-worker about his state and each rivulet down the back of his neck sends a warm wave of relief through his spine.

He's like the rest of them. Just like the rest of them. Just as vulnerable to the wind and the rain, and to health, and to science, and to the immovable logic of a capricious world.

"If you don't mind me askin', Boss... why _did_ you get yourself bogged?"

Sam glances back to Chris. "Suppose I was tired of the heat."

Chris stares at him blankly. Sam frowns.

"The _heatwave_ , Chris."

"Oh," Chris pauses, raises an eyebrow. "Right."

Sam looks back to his work, subject closed. Chris takes a step away and then turns back to Sam in his hesitant, persistent way.

"What heatwave?"


End file.
